4th Sunday of Lent 2020
1 Sam 16:1, 6-7, 10-13; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41
“There are none so blind as those who will not see.” I am sure that you are familiar with that saying. You may even have used it about those who seem to be wilfully blind. But have you ever applied it to yourself?
Are there things that you or I are unwilling to see? When you or I are criticising other people, do we ever ask ourselves whether we have the same faults? And if we do ask ourselves, do we truly look into our hearts to see if those faults are there? And if we don’t see them, is that because they are genuinely not there, or because we are blind to them?
Even if we really don’t have those faults, shouldn’t we see that we are breaking Our Lord’s command “Do not judge”? If we saw clearly the meaning of that commandment, would it not rule out all but the most constructive criticism? And, hand on heart, how much of our criticism can we honestly say is constructive?
There is another issue. We claim to be clear-sighted about all that is wrong with the world, with the Church, and with other people. Does that blind us to what is good? If you are familiar with the Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis, you may remember the dwarves. They are constantly negative in their outlook, criticising everything, until they literally create Hell for themselves, because they make themselves incapable of seeing anything good.
Thus, they are treated to a lavish banquet, but so negative have they become that all they can taste is straw. They are standing on a sunlit expanse of grass and trees, yet they are convinced that they are trapped in a gloomy prison. If we constantly see the bad in everything, then eventually we shall lose the ability to see the good, and everything will indeed become bad for us.
Do we see the presence of God in our lives, or are we blind to it? Do we recognise the generosity of God in the daily sunrise? Do we see His presence in the people whom we encounter in the daily round? Do we understand that our difficult times are a sharing in the redemptive sufferings of His Son? that our moments of joy are a foretaste of the resurrection? Does it occur to us that , when we set aside times for prayer, God is there before us, already present in the moment, however much we may become distracted, however difficult we may consider prayer to be?
Our First Reading tells us that “the Spirit of the Lord seized upon David and stayed with him from that day on.” Can we see, do we consider, that the Spirit of the Lord has seized on us through our baptism and confirmation? that this Spirit stays constantly with us? Like David, we may act in a way contrary to the Spirit, as he did when he committed adultery with Bathsheba and caused the death of Uriah: even then, the Spirit did not abandon him, but gave him the means and the gift of contrition and repentance. We too need, in every circumstance, to be alert, with the eyes of our mind open to the presence of the Holy Spirit, calling us to repentance.
The blind man of the Gospel not only recovers his physical sight: by degrees he also develops an increasing understanding of Jesus, the source and giver of life and light. Hence he is able to give his gloriously cheeky responses to the Pharisees: “Why do you want to hear it all again? Do you want to become His disciples too?” and “Now here is an astonishing thing! He has opened my eyes and you do not know where He comes from” after which he proceeds to give them a lecture in theology. Finally, he comes to worship Jesus.
What about us? Do we ask and allow Jesus to reveal to us our blindness and to cure it? Do we open ourselves to recognise His goodness, His presence, and the beauty of all His gifts? Do we open our eyes, so that He can bring us to an ever deeper, ever fuller understanding of Him, and of His call to us?
